Japan studies have shown the use of vision tracking technology within the early diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder.
Extraordinary professor of the Wassa Mikikas Omori University decided to investigate whether children with potential ASD would like predictable movement – behavior indicating neurode development disorders – longer than usual developing children.
Arrangements
A/Profa Omori has developed six pairs of 10-second movies showing predictable and unpredictable movements, creating geometric shapes. Each video pair has been shown side by side in a preferential paradigm to compare how research participants observe them.
These observations were then intercepted and analyzed using the attention tracking system developed by the Swedish company Tobia.
ArrangementsPublished within the Nature Journal Scientific Reports, they showed that children with possible autism “spent much more time observing predictable movements”, suggesting that they might develop this behavior over time.
“In contrast to typically developing children who have not shown their change of observation patterns, children with potential ASD showed a gradual increase in focusing on predictable movements as the stimulus progressed,” said A/Profa Omori.
According to the researcher, that is repetitive behavior characteristic of autism, “it can be associated with the difficulties in learning cause-and-effect relationships between trajectory and predicting full shapes.”
Meanwhile, the study also showed how predictable motor stimuli could be potentially used as a behavioral marker for early ASD screening.
Why does it matter
For this study, the reason for children with autism, spending more time observing repetitive movements and the way this behavior evolves over time, were unclear. Current research focused only on social communication deficits, equivalent to eye contact and language delay.
Research A/prof omori suggests that identification of such behavior could be used as an early indicator of autism in children on the age of three.
He also suggested the introduction of a brief video statement task as a part of routine development controls for young children aged 18-36 months to help discover people vulnerable to ASD. A/prof omori’s The research procedure may also be adopted for youngsters under 18 months.
Greater trend
Several studies and innovations have appeared lately to develop ASD diagnosis all over the world.
One of them, a tool that also used the technology of visionary tracking, was received by 510 (K) of the United States. The Eartec Diagnostics solution from Georgia supports the diagnosis of ASD by measuring kid’s concentration and response while watching short movies.
California Cognoa has also received the de Novo FDA settlement for AI powered software, which analyzes movies in regards to the behavior of kids to assist in the diagnosis of autism.
In Australia, research in The University of Southern Queensland is developing a cloud -based system that may robotically detect autism from a single brain scan.
Meanwhile in South Korea, University Hospital in Seoul And the National Mental Health Center founded a living laboratory for observing and collecting data from children to discover biomarkers and develop AI models for early autism diagnosis.